1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus and method for customizing a device driver (hereinafter, referred to as a printer driver).
2. Description of the Related Art
There is often a need to customize device control programs or drivers such as printer drivers, according to the installation environment of a printing system. Particularly, in recent years, customer's usage patterns have diversified with a proliferation of destinations where printing systems are installed, such that the demands for customizing a printer driver are on the increase.
Now, an IT manager typically manages printer drivers of in-house client PCs collectively. The IT manager customizes the printer drivers in advance and distributes them to a lot of client PCs under his or her control or causes the client PCs to download them. For example, a default setting is set to 2-sided printing, or color printing for a temporary employee is disabled, to make users use printer drivers with the same setting or different settings according to users. This type of collective management allows the versions of printer drivers installed in the client PCs to be collectively captured and managed, thereby reducing an output cost and decreasing loads of individual inquiries from users. Therefore, a total cost of ownership (TCO) reduction can be expected from the collective management.
There is a description of installing a printer driver customized based on initialization information stored on the server side, for example, in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2003-208276.
In the conventional customization system, however, even if an IT manager previously makes settings for customizing a printer driver, all related printer drivers (for example, all family drivers) are displayed independently of whether the printer drivers have already been customized when an end user installs the printer driver. In other words, both customized and non-customized printer drivers are displayed as printer drivers to be installed on a user interface screen. Since no identification indicating that a printer driver has already been customized is displayed on the screen display, the architecture in which all family drivers are displayed independently of whether they have already been customized is inconvenient in operability when the end user selects a customized driver to be naturally installed.